Koenig Solutions Buget Hotel, New Delhi, Dec 2007

No. There was no refund :-)

I arrived in Delhi on a Sunday early in the morning. Very dark and didnt actually see the "hotel". Very exhausted after the flight, but the hammering sure got me up. I phoned Abhijeet (the concierge in Delhi). He said no problem, he would try to solve the "problem" ... Still with no idea of where i was i opened the door of my room and saw a pile of sand down what is supposed to be a hall. My eyes were running from the fumes of welding ... somewhere in the building. I phoned Abhijeet again, and then the hotel manager came to my room and suggested i open the door to the toilet. Basic but good would have been a great compliment here. The manager suggested i let the toilet door stay open because there was a small shaft of a window in the toilet with about 50 centimeters to the wall oposite it. So the room could air-out. Well i then decided to take a walk and think this stuff over. After observing the hotel from the outside, i believe i understood the problem, and i went back in and packed my bags.

Putting people up in this hotel in the condition it was in (and still after a year still is in), is the direct decision of the CEO, Rohit Aggrawal.

The prices (even though cheap by European or American standards) charged by Koenig, are considered huge sums in India, so refunds are highly unlikely. And Koenig is highly unlikely to say no to business. There are higly "accomodating" - but the quality can vary you might say. When i mention this episode to the management they usually give the professional reendition about the background to why the hotels needed this renovation - that the entire street was ordered to cut a couple meters back by a Delhi court order, since over 50% of the houses had built into (bu more so - over, or overhanging) the public street area. Why they still used these hotels? Taking other budget hotels in use (like in the Karol Bahrg area, 1 Metro station down the road) would have cut into their profits... the better strategie then, was to put up students here and those that complained to offer them a transfer to Shimla (this is in January - the Himilayas arent exactly warm) or Dehradun (a center at the time still under construction) - or goa, which is a 2 hour flight away (a days travel). I tried upgrading to but Koenig was expriencing capacity problems and the middle range hotels where all taken (not in Karol Bahrg, of course)). But students like the pick-up and drop by the Koenig vehicles in the morning and in the evening and Karol Bahrg would meen they would have had to put in a new vehicle (possibly new driver) .... the cost would have cut into their profits (not by much though ... in relations to what the students are paying) but who would anyway "out there" find out? This strategy was laid out by Sundeep (Rohits assistant) and Rohit... the center manager, Hema, and the Concierge function, Abhijeet, in Delhi, had to simply cope with it...and the students complaints

Here is an answer to a common queries i am getting

Question:
Sorry to bother you. Would you recommend Koenigornot. I was thinking about doing my A+, MCDST and CCNA with them -- How's their trainers english?
Answer:
With the CCNA and other network admin certs, you get value, as far as i can tell, from the setup and doing the labs.
For the most part, most students can figure out the labs for themselvs, and use their practice for the exam.
Actual explainations by the instructor can play a lesser role without presenting a problem.
In 95% of the cases their english is ok for a short conversations but is completely hopeless for an all-day instruction exercise.
For CCNA certs where the value is in the hardware set-up and practice done on it, the language part might weigh less.
On the other hand, for sortware development certs i'd stick with self-study and Transcender training dvd's. If you happen to be in India you can register
for any Cisco, Microsoft, or Java exam at the NIIT center at Connaught Place in Delhi at,
NIIT LIMITED
P - 17/90, Madras Hotel Complex,
Connaught Place, New Delhi - 110001

The exam costs 50 USD.

They have exam centers all over india.

If you are interested in server oriented courses at Koenig ... they might provide you with course set-up and a pc and i would just go through the stuff myself... (which i already did twice already) ...the last time, the instructor just sat at his own pc doing his own thing. We got along ok.

Being India they can provide unbeatable prices. But what you pay - from the Indian perspective is exorbitant. Koenig has vertually no local students - all come with foreign currency from overseas.

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[chanctonbury63]

No youve got it all wrong. THEY pay YOU R1200 per night if you stay in the hotel.

[noitanon]

@chanctonbury63

The entire Balraj Khanna Marg road in Patel Nagar (the by Delhi standards middle-class neighbourhood where Koenig puts up its students, and where the Koenig headquarters are) was one big construction site a court order to tear down private building on or over public area. Koenig wouldn't transfer students to hotels (they did have capacity) in the Karol Bagh neighborhood, which is one Metro station away

[noitanon]

@chanctonbury63

google "Syed Ali Ahmed" and "Balraj Khanna Marg". Anno 2012 i am getting only one hit. On this page search for "Balraj Khanna Marg". And you'll read about the court order

[noitanon]

great! some Koenig attendees actually liked the hotel in the condition shown in the video, at the time (now 3 yrs ago).

[capricious71]

Was wondering why you chose Delhi? I'd prefer one of the others, notwithstanding what you've shown us here!

[noitanon]

@capricious71

interesting comment. The Delhi Center is close to the headquaters (the two where run in the same building at once). So i thought there would offer more flexibility as a testing and training center. For example (at least) %60 from the instructors at the other centers commute from (or are based in) Delhi. This comment is "buried" in the material available on Koenig on the net, so little of it really produced completely independant from Koenig.  So Kudo's.

[deathbyvegetables]

Don't Knock it, it was in this hotel (The Kingston I think, it's hard to recognise it as it had a tarp over it when I arrived) that I met, fell in love with and proposed to the woman who did me the greatest honour of becoming my wife.

As I arrived I thought "Oh My FSM, what have I let myself in for??" as I left I thought the very same thing!

[noitanon]

The hotel attendant quotes 1200Rp which in 2007 was 30 USD per night :-) Yep. Its the Koenig price allright.